11 Crazy Back to School Fails That Made Moms Cringe

Few days of the year are more momentous for a kid (or their parents!) than the first day back to school. Yet for many moms and dads, this pivotal day can and will go completely wrong -- at least according to a recent poll we did asking for parents' most mortifying back-to-school stories.

So if your own first day doesn't go quite as well as planned, read these stories, and rest assured, it could have been way worse.

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1. First Day Fail: I got my first son all ready for his first day of school. Picked out a cute outfit, packed his lunch into his new backpack, drove him to school, got the baby out and into the stroller. We took photos of us in front of the school sign, one of him alone and had a passerby take one of all three of us ... before asking why we were there when school started the NEXT DAY! Oy vey! I made up some fun excuse, took the kids to the park, and got up and did it all again the next day!

2. Trouble Afoot: We got up early and everyone was happy. My daughter was wearing a cute new outfit with adorable little slip-on shoes. We got in the car and headed to school. She got out of the car and walked off. Three hours later, I got a call from school saying my daughter wasn't wearing shoes ... WHAT? She left with shoes on, I remember, because they were cute. So I ran to the car, and sure enough, they were on the floor in the back seat. She had slipped them off in the car and forgot to put them on. She didn't say a word to anyone about it until she went to PE. All we could do was laugh!

3. The One That Got Away: On the first day of kindergarten, the school lost my daughter! They lined all the kids up for pickup, and my daughter wasn't there. It took 30 minutes to figure out they had put her in the bus rider line instead of the pickup line, so she was just standing there on the wrong side of the school waiting for me. Thankfully she was fine.

4. Breakfast Blunder: We have a tradition of taking our son out for breakfast the first day of school ever since he started elementary school. Only when he started middle school, the school start time moved up an hour. Just when we were ready to get into the car to drive to the restaurant, he realized that the other kids in the neighborhood were walking down to the bus stop. He halted our tradition by jumping out of the car and running to catch the bus. That year, we started a new tradition of reading all of the school literature sent to us over the summer!

5. Self Defense 101: On my daughter's first day of first grade, the secretary called and told me to bring her a new set of clothes. When I went up there, they told me that a third grader had pushed her out of a swing and she beat him up! Her clothes were torn and they were suspending her. Thankfully, plenty of witnesses said she was defending herself, so she was not suspended.

6. Double Trouble: When our twin boys went to first grade, one son's teacher saw one of them in the hall. Thinking it was one of her students, she took him by the arm and returned him to his desk. She was quite surprised to find his twin brother sitting quietly in his desk!

7. Emergency! My son ran into a file cabinet and the school called me to bring him to the ER for stitches!

8. Tardy Slip: In first grade, I got into a cleaning frenzy with all the kids out of the house and my youngest down for a nap, and I lost track of time. I was 20 minutes late picking my daughter up! Now I keep an alarm on my phone that goes off 10 minutes before I need to leave.

9. No Lunch for You: My son rode the bus for the very first time on the first day of first grade. He got on with his lunch box and left it there! We got it back a week later.

10. Dude, Where's My Class? When we moved to a new school, they assured me that someone would show our son around. Only once he got there, no one was there to help him find his class! He wandered around school, lost, until another kid showed him to class.

11. Sob Story: On my son's first day of kindergarten, he started crying ... and then I started crying!

Ever had an embarrassing or crazy back to school mishap happen to you?